DIY spice organization

I have been wanting to better organize all my spices for a while now and last week I finally decided to do it!

All my spices are in containers and when I pull out the containers all I can see are the tops of the jars. So I was having to pick up each jar to see what was in it. With the exception of one brand, none of them have the contents on the lids, so it was a pain. Especially if I was in a hurry to find something last minute to add while I was cooking. Some of the spices are in small jars and were stacked on top of each other, which made more of a pain.  I also really wanted to eliminate plastic jars and have everything stored in glass. Some spices were already in glass, so I wanted to be able to continue using them. And finally, I had some duplicate spices and I wanted to combine those into one. 

So. 

Now I just need a plan of attack. I started buying a few glass jars here and there at Target that I liked and that gave me the idea of just copying the Target jars and putting a chalkboard label on top. A few days later I just decided I would spray paint all the lids with chalk paint and forego the label on top. And so that is what I did!!

Plastic and metal lids were painted with 3-4 light coats of spray paint. 

I didn't want the old labels on the jars anymore either, so I emptied the contents out into a bowl, pealed the paper off, then soaked the jar for a few minutes in very hot water. After soaking, the labels were very easy to scrape off with my fingernail and/or a pampered chef stone scraper. I did have a few that were more difficult and I just scrubbed them several times with glass cleaner until all the residue was off!

I then used a funnel and added all the spices back into the jar and once the paint was dry on the lid, replaced the chalkboard painted lid. 

I wrote the contents on the top of each lid with a white sharpie paint pen and that was it! 

Here you can see I'm in the middle of the process, some have green lids, some have black...now they are all black and easy to write on. 

Don't work on too many at a time...you don't want to mix things up and forget what is what.  I also wanted to try and keep the spices in the same lids and bottles they were originally in. I did 5 or so at a time and everything went smoothly!

I do need to make some labels for the front of the bottles and I will be working on that later this week...I will post the finished product soon!

This was a very easy and inexpensive project that anyone can do!

Happy Monday!! 8)